Baylor University student Jake Rutkowski is at San Diego Comic-Con on a simple if daunting mission: Turn the billion-dollar business of big-time college sports electronic and virtual.

Rutkowski is promoting a new collegiate virtual reality esports league at Future Tech Live during San Diego Comic-Con.

“Our goal is to be the NCAA of e-sports,” said Rutkowski, 22, who is studying electrical engineering at the private Christian university in Waco, Texas.

That would look pretty good on a job resume: Changed college sports forever as we know it.

Rutkowski and other like-minded college students from across the nation are at Future Tech Live at the Omni Hotel in downtown San Diego across from the convention center to promote CVRE as the next generation of the NCAA.

CVRE stands for Collegiate VR Esports and it combines collegiate athletics with virtual reality in an esports format.

“VR esports doesn’t really exist yet,” Rutkowski said.

The nascent league features nine college teams including Stanford, U.C. Berkeley and, of course, Baylor. CVRE is looking to expand with teams from the University of Southern California and other colleges nationwide.

Players wear VR goggles that take them inside a virtual world where they can play competitive video games against each other.

The college teams compete at games like Beat Saver, which has been described as Guitar Hero with Star Wars-like lightsabers.

Rutkowski brought a VR game called Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes to Future Tech Live during Comic-Con to give visitors a taste of the future of big-time college sports. In the VR game, players work together to solve puzzles and defuse a bomb in a virtual world before a ticking clock expires.

Future Tech Live showcases the latest in virtual reality, augmented reality, artificial intelligence and gaming technology with immersive experiences where Comic-Con attendees can walk on a virtual moon, battle space pirates and face off against a robot bunny assassin.

The temporary installations at the Omni Hotel across from the San Diego Convention Center include a pop-up planetarium from U.C. San Diego’s astrophysics center, a VR version of the International Space Station and even an opportunity to withdraw some cryptocurrency at a BTM – a Bitcoin ATM.

The college VR esports league is just over a year old with approximately 100 students competing in head-to-head matchups between schools and in national tournaments. The school teams don’t have to travel like NCAA basketball and football teams. They can play from their dormitories or lecture halls on their respective campuses. The esport players meet on an electronic field in a virtual arena.

Rutkowski said the first step for CVRE is to gain recognition for esports athletes on their own college campuses.

Brady MacDonald is a theme park reporter for the Orange County Register and the Southern California News Group. He’s covered the theme park industry for more than 25 years. He writes about Disney, Universal, Six Flags, SeaWorld, Cedar Fair and Legoland parks in Southern California, across the United States and around the world. As a member of the SCNG Features team, he also writes about entertainment, travel, pop culture, music, restaurants and craft beer.

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